Friday, December 4, 2015

The Best New Toys & Games from ChiTAG

I took my family last week to the Chicago Toy & Game Fair at Navy Pier. It's one of my favorite blogger events/toy events of the year. A whole number of toy and game designers are in a big room at booths, and you get to go and see what's new this year.

That's cool in general, as I am a big toy and game nut, but what I LOVE about this show is the diversity of manufacturers there. Yes, you have the big companies like Razr, Uncle Milton, Mayfair, or Spinmaster, giving us what's going on with the latest in franchised toys: NOTE TO SELF: There's a lot of Star Wars licenses this year, with super cool stuff!)

Here's Legendary Yoda, a video I took at ChiTAG, which is now available in stores!

But even more exciting to me is to see the small toy and game manufacturers. Many of them have only one or only a couple of games or toys that they are making. For lots of those guys, this game is their passion project-- something they believe in enough to risk a lot of time, energy, and money to try to fan it to life. Some of them have been successful already and are trying to make lightning strike twice-- others are still waiting for the lightning to strike.

A game invented by a teenager-- Agitation:The world's best cup of coffee!

The other thing I love about this show is that there is an educational component-- where kids invent their own games and display them just as if they were a manufacturer. Some of the games are incredibly complex with rules that seem as if they were picked by random (or a 12 year old child) while others are worthy of serious game play. Whether or not the games are great or not, I applaud and want to support the amazing creativity that goes into all of them. And those guys will one day be one of the small exhibitors of the show. It's how the food chain works!

As I walked the show, I saw a bunch of toys and games that I wanted to review for the blog and, fortunately many of the manufacturers gave me games to review! Some of them I'll be keeping after my review for my own personal enjoyment-- others I'll be re-gifting. So if you are a friend, and receive a slightly opened game-- know that it was in the cause of science that I opened it!

Please note that I may have received free products, but I promise that my hype or lack of hype of any toy or game is solely my own.

Here are just a few of the small manufacturers that I spoke with during the Fair and a brief summary of the game or product that interested me:

X-cube: A much harder Rubik's cube type game invented by a local young man Dane Christiansen who was an expert at Rubik's and decided to amp it up a notch. He did a Kickstarter campaign a few years ago and doubled his goal. The other cool thing is that originally, they were printed by 3-D printer! He's since created a much easier puzzle to solve The Boob Cube, which has just two moving parts. Even I could solve it!

The Presidential Game: One of the games I was really interested in, and look forward to playing with my family is the Presidential Game. It's kind of like a political version of Risk. In order to win the presidency, you have to capture 270 electoral votes across the map of America. You do that by either campaigning or fundraising in various states, hoping to ultimately control the state's electoral votes. One of the cool things about this game is that it has a web component. You can use your computer to keep score/tally of which side Democrats or Republicans are winning. Of course, there is no third party option (sorry Ralph Naderites!) The problem that I foresee in my household is that no one will want to be the Republicans. (Although I bet Karl Rove kicks butt at this game!)
WEBSITE: http://www.thepresidentialgame.com
BUY ON AMAZON: http://amzn.to/1N1hqEC

Phone Phever: This is a game that I'm still not quite sure about. It's clear that the family who invented this game is putting their all behind it (They were there in force, and one of them was wearing a cell phone costume!) It's a game that's sort of like Trivial Pursuit, but you can use your smartphone to answer the questions. The dad who invented it wanted to bring the fun of family game night, and include his smart-phone obsessed kids. While I get the idea, I'm not sure that encouraging more screen time is where most families want to focus their non-screen time family time. But I applaud the effort, and hope that I'm wrong and they make millions!
WEBSITE: http://www.phonephever.com
BUY ON EBAY: http://tinyurl.com/PHONEPHEVER (available on Amazon soon)

Genius Games: This booth caught my eye with their slogan: Why learn science when you can play it? They have a series of games based on science-- One is about DNA, another about Peptides, another about ionized compounds. It's a fascinating idea-- to gamify the learning process of chemistry, and it looks like they may have done it. I spoke at length with one of their reps. They produce all of their games by Kickstarter (and their website offers some helpful advice about kickstarter) Basically they do that to prove demand and interest for a game- the theory being if you can't get enough people to buy in on the kickstarter level, you maybe should examine the premise of whether you have something interesting on your hands. Their first game over earned by 317%. Their games are primarily about chemistry, and I suggested that their next game be physics related. Which I am pretty sure it will be!

Versa-Bricks: This is a great idea that had to happen sometime. Somebody got the amazing idea of creating a toy/building block that could connect Legos, Hot Wheels, and K'Nex! It's like the Holy Grail of building blocks. This was also the product of a successful kickstarter campaign! The bricks/connectors come currently in only red and black and in a few different configurations/pieces that allow you to meld these different toy-building sets into one monster set. We tried a few out, and although initially a little difficult to figure out, they do work with all the systems. Talk about playing well with others!
WEBSITE: http://www.versa-bricks.com/
BUY ON AMAZON: http://amzn.to/1HLnXnX

Giant Word Winder: This is an educational word game played on a 9x9 (or more)playing surface. Players lay out 16 interchangeable and double sided boards – each board consisting of a grid of 16 letters. 2-3 teams or individual players take turns highlighting words on the board with brightly colored chips. The first players to complete a winding path of words from one side of the board to its opposite side wins! It's a sort of cross between tic tac toe and word search/ which should come as no suprise-- the inventor (David Hoyt) is the guy who co-invented the Jumble and is one of the most syndicated word game creators in the world. The educational elements of this make it great for schools and school systems to pick up (and right now they are running free demonstrations for schools to try it out!) They also have a numbers game that plays similarly.
WEBSITE: http://dlhoyt.com/giant-word-winder/
BUY ON AMAZON: http://amzn.to/1NM9pXH

This is just a small sample of some of the people that I met at ChiTag. I'll be reviewing a few of the games and toys I saw there over the next couple of weeks (just in time for Channukah (and that other CH holiday!)